Dell's foothold in the server market is strongest among small and medium-sized businesses, which are the prime candidates for tower-format servers such as the PowerEdge T710. Enterprises make use of towers too, especially in branch offices where rack-mount facilities are often absent. The T710 therefore boasts a number of enterprise-level manageability and software features, just like its rack-mounted sibling, the R710.
The PowerEdge T710 supports two Xeon 5500-series processors and up to 144GB of RAM. Our review sample came with 12GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM in six 2GB DIMMs
The T710's six PCIe slots (two PCIe x16, four PCIe x8), 18 DIMM slots with 144GB maximum RAM, and dual Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) processors have more space to breathe in the larger tower case, which means that Dell has been able to use larger 90cm fans. Bigger, slower-rotating fans mean less noise — although you still wouldn't want one of these boxes under your desk.
The key features on the front panel are a diagnostic LCD, which normally glows blue but turns red when warning of a fault, a reset button and a pair of USB ports, which are useful for plugging in a keyboard and mouse for occasional manual configuration.
Internal components are easy to remove and replace, thanks to Dell's colour-coded latches.
The server can optionally include a pair of 1100W hot-pluggable power supplies — our review sample included only one — plus up to 16 hot-plug 2.5in. 146GB 10,000rpm SAS drives that sit behind the removable front panel. This configuration will provide a maximum of around 2.3TB: our review sample came with eight RAID 5-configured drives, providing around 1TB of storage. However, because tower servers are more likely to house their own rather than rely on external storage, you can install a 3.5in. drive cage that will allow up to 8TB to be installed.
Four Gigabit Ethernet NIC ports sit in the rear panel, along with a remote management network port and an SD slot: all are identical in function to those of the rack-mount edition.
Inside, a plastic shroud guides air over the memory and CPUs. Unlatch it, and the pair of Xeons with the Intel 5520 chipset dominate the motherboard. Behind them, from an airflow point of view, sit a quartet of hot-pluggable fans venting to the rear.
Everything is straightforward to remove and replace, thanks to Dell's colour-coded latches, and we found it easy to configure and use the system. This 35kg server with its swing-out feet feels solidly built and, if usage patterns or the environment change, you can buy a rack-mount kit to convert the T710 into a 5U system.
The PowerEdge T710 is ideal for branch office or medium-sized business use, where performance, expandability and flexibility are key attributes — and where downtime due to hardware failure is not an option.
Specifications
| Cabinet (chassis) | |
|---|---|
| Case form factor | tower (or 5U rack with optional mounting kit) |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 21.8x46.6x73.2 cm |
| Weight | 35.3 kg |
| Colour | grey |
| Tool-free access | Yes |
| Front-accessible bays | 2 x 3.5in. |
| Internal bays | 16 x 2.5in. or 8 x 3.5in. |
| Hard drive storage | |
| Hard drive size | 146 GB |
| Rotation speed | 10000 rpm |
| Storage controller | optional PERC 6/i integrated SAS/SATA daughtercard controller with 256MB cache, or SAS 6/iR; optional PERC 6/E adapter with 256MB or 512MB cache |
| Interfaces & networking | |
| Serial | 1 |
| USB | 8 (2 front/6 rear) |
| Ethernet | 2 dual port embedded Broadcom NetXtreme IITM 5709c Gigabit Ethernet NIC with failover and load balancing |
| Expansion slots (free) | 6 x PCIe (2 PCIe x16, 4 PCI x8) |
| Other | dedicated management port, SD slot |
| Memory | |
| RAM installed | 12288 MB |
| Number of memory slots | 18 |
| RAM capacity | 144 GB |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Other | supports 2 hot-plug redundant PSUs (1100W) |
| Optical storage | |
| CD / DVD type | CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo |
| OS & software | |
| Operating system | Windows Small Business Server 2008, Standard Edition and Premium Edition; Windows Essential Business Server 2008, Standard Edition and Premium Edition, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11; Hyper-V (optional); VMware ESXi 4.0 or ESXi 3.5 (optional) |
| Software included | Dell OpenManage (including Dell Management Console), iDRAC6 (0ptional iDRAC6 Enterprise) |
| Processor | |
| Processor manufacturer | Intel |
| Processor model | Xeon E5502 |
| Clock speed | 1.86 GHz |
| Number of processors installed | 2 |
| Number of processors supported | 2 |
| Level 2 cache | 4 MB |
| Service & support | |
| Standard warranty | 3 years |
| Video | |
| Graphics processor | Matrox G200 |
| Expand | |
Images
Member reviews
Dell T710 comes with 8MB of Video Adapter (Matrox G200). Even for normal web browsing on multimedia or text intensive websites, the graphics processing / display is so slow that it feels like you are using an old fashioned P-III system. I dont know what dell was thinking of when selecting the size of Video Adapter for this server but this is really ridiculous. Until now, dell does not give you the option to expand the size of Video Adapter when ordering a new server, atleast not on their website.
- 6.00 out of 10
6.00 out of 10Dear all..
I am using T710 Dell server, i am having an inbuilt PCI express slot in that,, i want to change it to PCI-X slot, is it possible to do that?? and if possible how can i do that?? please help me out,,
thanks & regards
DEEP
- 5.00 out of 10
5.00 out of 10Ummm ... This is a server. Not a workstation.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10your server has no purpose for a large video card and why would you be surfing the web on a server? In a production environment you shouldnt even have a microsoft server gui installed. Console baby its all about the console. I have 2 of these systems and they run Centos 5.5 flawlessly. Not to mention I can reboot the server from home if there is a power outage because of the IDRAC card but its advisable to upgrade to the higher level idrac with remote console support. Regardless this system is perfect for a small to mid sized business that needs a system that can grow with their business. Only major flaw is glitches with the broadcom 4 port card and virtualization. Had some issues with it and Dell pointed out some current problems with this when I had to call in but support was awesome and I cant wait to max one of these guys out.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10